


Drunk History: The Night We Got Together

by kutubiyya



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Champions Trophy 2017, Drunkenness, Fic Exchange, M/M, Things You Said When You Were Drunk, sorry kiwi fam i went there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 20:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12328368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kutubiyya/pseuds/kutubiyya
Summary: You were sporting a rueful, toothy smile under those thick-rimmed glasses. From time to time, I wondered if you’d picked the glasses out deliberately: the specciest spectacles that ever did spec, like you were daring us all to make the comparison.--Trent drunkenly retells the tale of a drunken hook-up. This is not a complicated fic XD





	Drunk History: The Night We Got Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiwialicat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwialicat/gifts).



> Cheers to twistsofsilver for putting up with my whinging while I procrastinated rather than writing this (and for suggesting a source of insecurity for Santner). And huge thanks to maythefoursbewithyou for beta reading, and for insights into Kiwi masculinity ;)
> 
> Cheers to hannnnnie for organising everything <3
> 
> (And to all the other writers for being patient while I held everyone up, ahem; sorry, I suck.)
> 
> Most of all, thanks to kiwialicat, for writing such wonderful, thoughtful, and emotionally-complicated fic. I'm sorry I only have this tiny, dumb, and rather rough-around-the-edges thing to offer in exchange, but I hope you'll take it for what it is: a small token of gratitude <3

The atmosphere in the dressing room was like a wet weekend. Which made sense, really, given that it hadn’t done much but rain since we’d arrived in the UK.

(Not that I’m still bitter about that match against the Aussie bastards, or anything. But, for the record: we had had them. 53-3, with one for me? We totally had them. We were grinding them into the _dirt_. Until the rain came.)

Anyway. That Friday in Cardiff. A miserable dressing room. Rain or no rain, we’d lost. More than that: we hadn’t won a single match in the tournament. We were on our way home, and all set on getting smashed before we left. It was definitely my plan, anyway.

But there you were, across the room, all limbs and cheekbones. You were sporting a rueful, toothy smile under those thick-rimmed glasses. From time to time, I wondered if you’d picked the glasses out deliberately: the specciest spectacles that ever did spec, like you were daring us all to make the comparison.

They weren’t easy boots to fill. _I’m not Dan_ , you told me, another night, in another hemisphere, gazing down into your fourth or fifth stubby like it held all the secrets of left-arm spin. _I’ll never be Dan. But…_

I never did hear the end of that sentence; Baz walked in at that point, and he wasn’t one to let his boys sit there being all introspective. But since that night – since we sat, and drank, and talked for hours – something had been brewing between us.

\--

_Oh,_ come _on. That’s such a corny line._

_I don’t know what you mean._

_We had a beer, and then something was_ brewing _?_

_Listen, who’s telling this story, you or me?_

\--

Anyway, it was pretty gloomy in the dressing room in Cardiff, even if the beer was helping a bit. A lot of things were sort of lurking in the background, things we were _not_ talking about so hard we might as well have been shouting them up into the darkening sky outside.

There were the absences: the sound of Baz’s laughter, the sight of Dan’s quiet smile; the thought that maybe we missed our best chance to win a trophy, last year. There was the silent divide, of haves and have-nots: who’d been bought in the IPL auction, who had county contracts in England, who had nothing more a long, quiet winter ahead. It was hard not to brood about the expectations on us, and the ways we’d fallen short; we were everyone’s favourite losers, again. Playing cricket _in the right spirit_ was all very well, but you couldn’t live off good will alone, when the Big Three weren’t inclined to share the wealth.

No-one was talking about any of that, though. Maybe no-one was even thinking it. Not even me.

I was busy, after all: pretending I wasn’t watching you.

Yeah, Jimmy spotted me. Of course he did. But brace yourself: he actually had the tact not to say anything until the next morning. I know. First time for everything, eh?

He made up for lost time, though. He was so busy teasing me at breakfast that his coffee went cold. Seriously. _Neesh_ forgot about his _coffee_. I was almost proud.

Anyway, the night before. I wasn’t watching you. Much.

You still hadn’t changed out of your match gear, as if you weren’t quite willing to let it go, yet. It made you look more angular than the other kits did, all those pale lines cross-crossing shirt and pants, like you were a book and someone had decided to underline their favourite bits: a loop around your shoulders, a lazy curve across the small of your back, and another, tighter curve hugging your backside as it joined your hips together. And the long, lingering trails up your legs, straight as an arrow until they get to your thighs, at which point there’s nothing for it, they’ve got no choice, they have to fork—

\--

_You know everyone’s kit has the same lines on it, right._

_Looks different on you._

_That was all just an excuse for another pun, wasn’t it?_

_I don’t know. Some people just have no appreciation for art._

_Oh,_ art _. Really. And here I was thinking you were just spinning a tale over a pint._

_You can stop interrupting me any time you want, eh?_

\--

Eventually I reckoned I’d had enough beer to try flirting. We wouldn’t be playing together again for months, anyway, so if I crashed and burned, there’d be enough time to live it down. Hopefully.

The last night of the tour always focuses the mind, Baz told me once. I don’t think this was exactly what he meant.

So I sidled over, all casual and smooth and with just that little air of mystery, I like to think. I wasn’t so smooth with the way I kind of fell into the chair next to you, but we’ll skip over that bit.

“Want to get out of here?” I said quietly, waving my mostly empty beer towards, you know, the night air and all that.

And you said, with a nod at my bottle, “Apparently, peeling the label off’s a sign of sexual frustration.”

\--

_I didn’t say that!_

_Yes you did._

_I did not. …Okay, maybe I did, but it definitely wasn’t the_ first _thing I said._

_You were pretty smashed._

_So were you! You came strolling over with this big, pissed grin on your face. I knew_ exactly _what you were thinking._

_You didn’t. I’m smooth. And… how was my grin pissed, anyway?_

_Like your normal grin, but, you know… pissed-er. Drunker._

\--

You’re cute when you’re smashed, by the way. Your glasses had slid down your nose and you were sort of blinking up at me, a little crease down the middle of your forehead and your nostrils all flared— _Okay_ , don’t give me that look. I won’t talk about your nose. Fine.

You’re working up quite a blush, by the way.

Anyway, despite the blatant come-on – yeah, it _was_ blatant – I couldn’t get you up out of that chair. Not for the life of me. Not without having to spell it out in front of the guys. Even by your standards, you were in no hurry to move. You really, really wanted to talk about all the food you’d been missing on tour, the things you couldn’t get in England, and what you were going to eat as soon as you got back.

\--

_Lies. This is all lies, I don’t believe a word of it._

_I promise I’m not making this up._

_You’re just mocking me with the food stuff._

_I’m not! I remember the food stuff because it was cute._

_You think everything’s cute._

_Not true. Your feet definitely aren’t cute._

_Fair. But the point is, you’re remembering it wrong._

_All right then, Slinky. You take over._

_About time._

\--

I was nervous. So nervous. I mean, like I said, I was pretty sure I knew what was going on. With us, I mean. You kept touching my arm, every time you said something.

No, you _did_ ; you’re not half as subtle as you think you are. Pissed grin, remember.

You were touching my arm and you kept looking away; you wouldn’t meet my eyes. I was drunk, but I wasn’t blind.

Still, it was nerve-wracking. You’d been around that world for so long, you were a senior player, you were a star on the world stage getting big money in the IPL auction. Whereas I still felt, sometimes, like I was just making up the numbers. Like I was only in the team until someone remembered that I wasn’t meant to be there.

Also, it’s not every night you’re in a taxi back to the hotel and your head’s swimming and you’re hurting from the match and all you can think about is kissing the guy sitting next to you.

So I talked and talked, trying to fill the gaps, all the way until we were standing outside the door of my hotel room.

And I finally managed to get out the words I’d been fumbling towards for what felt like hours.

“Is this what I think it is?”

And you smiled, and said, “Yes.”

\--

_That’s not how I remember it._

_Probably because you passed out face down on my bed about five minutes later._

_That might have had something to do with it, yeah._

\--


End file.
